Wings of Freedom
by Emmeline Bondurant
Summary: One choice can change it all.


Armin laid back onto the dusty stable floor restlessly. Many events had already taken place since his awakening at dawn and it wasn't even high noon yet. He had been there just minutes after breakfast had ended when shouts of alarm came from the direction of the front gates. With several of his friends on his heels, he took off towards the commotion.

Upon arriving at the gate, a large boom sounded through the air. It was a sound that he had heard all too often - the sound of a titan falling. The large stone door was already being lowered again as three cloaked figures, holding out what looked to be sticks, were surrounded by the corps on duty, blades glinting in the sun. Levi swept back over the wall on the wires of his maneuvering device and moved past the guards as he landed roughly on his feet.

"Stand down!"

Levi's command unsettled Armin's stomach and he frowned as he realized that for the first time that he'd seen, his leader wasn't speaking to the guards. In fact, Levi appeared nervous. Slowly the cloaked figures shifted slightly and lowered the sticks.

"Lower your hoods."

Again the demand was met with hesitation before one by one, the figures reached up and swept back their hoods.

There were murmurs around the courtyard as the faces of the mysterious figures were revealed. A woman stood nearest to the closed gate, guarded carefully by two men. All three were white in the face with confused and frightened expressions. Erwin marched around Armin as someone stopped by his side.

"What's happening?"

Looking up at the familiar face of Eren, he shrugged. "I think they showed up at the gate screaming for help. They were being cornered by a Titan," Armin explained to the best of his knowledge. Erwin finally made it to Levi's side and took a good long look at the three intruders.

"Where are you from? And what are your names?" Erwin asked with a tone that left no room for argument. "If you can't provide a reasonable answer, you will be detained until further notice."

The man with red hair stiffened and Armin could see his eyes set ablaze. Before he could do anything rash, the dark haired woman stepped forward through the protective barrier of the men.

"We are from England." Her words brought about a rush of gasps through the crowd. "My name is Hermione Granger. These are Harry Potter and Ron Weasley."

Armin could hear the whispers of the crowd as he stood back in disbelief.

 _English?_

 _They're from the north?_

 _Impossible, it's too far!_

 _They would have never survived!_

 _Lies!_

Erwin looked at the three consideringly; taking in the frizzy hair, freckles, and spectacles. "How did you travel all this way?"

The three strangers glanced at one another before Hermione, the girl had said her name was, stepped forward with a sigh.

Her eyes were sorrowful as she answered with carefully measured words. "We aren't sure."

Before the crowd could go into an uproar she looked at Erwin pleadingly. "May we please speak to the officials that are in charge in private?"

There were several long moments until Erwin motioned for the guard to lead the strangers into the depths of the castle. Armin watched as the commander and Levi spoke in hushed tones before following at quick pace. Before they too disappeared into the strong stone structure Levi turned and shouted, "Back to your posts!"

The courtyard erupted into a flurry of movement, not wanting to upset their superior further than he already seemed to be. It was obvious to Armin that Levi had seen something that scared him and he wanted to know what it was. Still, he went back to his morning chores like the rest of the corps.

Eren followed him into the stables and stood aside as Armin finished up his work for the morning - shoveling out the stables and brushing the horses. When he finally fell to the floor and spread himself out, his friend joined him. They laid there silently, staring at the ceiling until Eren finally broke the silence.

"Do you think they're lying?"

The question didn't catch Armin off guard like he wished it would have. "I don't know."

Nothing quite shocked him like it used to.

* * *

Hermione sat back in her chair silently, gripping her wand tightly within her robes. They were being kept in a dark room that she concluded was in the dungeons of the castle, with only flickering torches to give them light. After being led into the damp room and asked to sit, they had been told that Erwin, she believed they said, would be with them momentarily.

Across from her, Harry took off his glasses and used the edge of his robe to clean them. Splatters of blood still covered his face and collar. The sight of it sent chills up her spine when it reminded her of how the stains got there - remembering the fear on Ginny's face.

Beside her Ron had laid down on the table, resting his head on folded arms. He was heaving in breath as if the wind had been knocked out of him and she painfully realized that it had been. Just minutes before, he had watched his sister die. Hermione narrowed her eyes at the table. No, he had watched his sister be eaten.

Panic rushed over her, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Her hackles raised and she was just about out of her chair when she came back down. Taking a deep breath of her own, she settled back down into the seat and bowed her head, tears threatening to leak from her eyes.

The door to the room burst open and if she had been anything less than collected after the war, she would have jumped. A man that she assumed to be Erwin stepped into the room with the man who had saved them. She didn't know his name, but she recognized the look of distrust in his eyes.

They looked to each other and Hermione suspected that they had spoken about which course of action to take before coming in. After heaving a sigh, their rescuer nodded and moved to lean against the wall. He watched over them with guarded eyes as Erwin sat in the chair at the head of the table.

He leaned forward onto his elbows with a frown. "I want you to explain to me again how you traveled all this way from England."

Ron's spine stiffened and Harry shifted in his seat, leaning his head back as he closed his eyes. Both of them stayed silent and Hermione knew that they weren't ready to speak.

"As I said before, we aren't sure how we came to be here." Her words seemed to make matters worse as the man leaning against the wall seemed to lose patience and stomp forward.

His hands banged on the surface of the table as he growled out, "Do not play coy! I witnessed with my own eyes the witchcraft that you are capable of with those...sticks! You brought that titan to our doorstep and several more will follow. This fortress is no longer safe. Explain!"

Hermione stared into those dark eyes that seemed to glare into the depths of her soul.

"We are unable to take back what has been done." The words tore her eyes away from the man and onto Harry, who was glaring back at the man. "I am dearly sorry for what has happened, but no amount of witchcraft and force will change that." His words drifted into the realm of sarcasm, "Unless you have a solution."

Hermione sighed as she ran a hand through her hair. "Harry…"

Her friend leaned back and went silent once more at her tone.

"I do not know how to explain how we came to be here other than to say that due to a botched ritual that involved witchcraft, we arrived here in the middle of a field."

"A botched ritual?" Erwin questioned as he watched Levi sit in the chair next to him. He could tell the soldier was afraid. Whatever he claimed to see must have been something truly horrifying.

"Our home has been recently devastated by war between our kind. In hopes to change the past, we attempted a time ritual. It has obviously failed." At Erwin's imploring glance, Hermione continued, "I believe that instead of taking us into the past, the ritual took us to an alternate dimension."

There was a long gap of silence and Hermione wondered if she should have chosen to tell the truth as she gazed upon the emotionless looks she was receiving from the men. Erwin stood from his seat, mind racing at the information that the woman had given them. He turned and left the room quickly, with Levi on his heels.

As soon as they were out of earshot of the guards he turned on the soldier with a worried grimace. "Is it possible?!" he whispered through gritted teeth.

Levi's frown deepened and he hesitated before turning towards one of the guards. "Bring us Arlert!"

* * *

Armin bowed his head in his hands as his superiors gave him the rundown of what had happened with the strangers. All of the information being thrown at him was whirling around in his mind.

 _War?_

 _Alternate dimension?_

 _Their kind?_

"Witchcraft?" he questioned aloud. "I didn't know that something like this...like their kind even existed." Armin looked up at Levi with a slightly frightened expression. "What did you see them do? What did you see, Captain?"

"Green flashes and explosions." Levi said as a shiver that he barely concealed rushed over his shoulders. "There was more than one titan, Arlert."

Armin shivered openly at the look that crossed Levi's face.

"There were six of them. I watched as those green flashes killed them."

Armin's confusion prompted Erwin to pick up the explanation.

"Armin, Levi didn't have to use his blades. Those...green flashes...killed those titans without severing the nape of the neck."

A deep sense of foreboding flooded every inch of Armin's being as he once more dropped his head into his hands.

"I don't understand," he gasped out after the panic had receded. Before he continued, he looked up into Erwin's eyes with a deep breath. "If a human can turn into a titan...I can't think of a reason why they couldn't be telling the truth."

Levi, having seen the glint of curiosity in Armin's eyes, grabbed him by the shoulder. "You will not be going near them!"

"I need to be able to speak with them so that we can figure out this situation. You can't just shove them out the gates, but you also can't just lock them away in a dungeon!" Armin insisted while waving about his hands for emphasis.

Before Levi was able to shout out a direct order forbidding Armin from going near the strangers, Erwin interrupted, "We will sit in with Armin while he speaks with the…"

"Strangers," Armin provided.

"...with the strangers," Erwin finished with a nod while ignoring the look of disbelief that Levi sent him.

* * *

"Armin!"

With a jolt, Armin turned around in the dim corridor to find Eren running up to him.

"I've been looking around for you for hours! Where have you been?"

At the concern that Armin heard in Eren's voice, he smiled. "I was speaking with Commander Erwin and Captain Levi..." He cut off his sentence and quickly changed the subject. "We're late for dinner. We should go!"

Despite the curiosity that Eren was feeling, he let the change of subject slide. He grabbed his friend by the arm and began dragging him down the hall and up a set of stairs.

"I wonder how long the strangers will be staying."

At the mention of the three in the dungeons, Armin's thoughts went back to the conversation that he had had with his superiors. After further deliberation about what was appropriate and what wasn't, it had been decided that Armin would make a solid judgement about the situation after conversing with the strangers.

As they reached the dining hall, they stepped in line to get their trays. Mikasa immediately joined them, as she had been waiting for them by the entrance.

"Eren, you weren't snooping about again, were you?"

Eren grouched, offended, "Mikasa! There is no reason for you to be watching after me."

The two went back and forth about if Eren needed a babysitter.

Armin was perfectly all right with the turn of conversation and even put in his opinion, "If you didn't lurk about in the shadows so much."

This brought out another point on Mikasa's long list of reasons and Armin was able to make it all the way through dinner without the strangers being mentioned again.

* * *

Ron awoke in what he assumed to be the early morning, only to be proven wrong when he found Hermione and Harry sitting at the table once more with four empty trays and two full ones. He noticed that they were for breakfast and lunch.

"Good afternoon, Ron," Hermione greeted him as she went back to her conversation with Harry.

"They still haven't explained what those things were, Hermione."

Ron immediately knew that Harry was talking about the monsters that had devoured his sister. He sat at the table and pulled over the tray with a bowl of cool soup, becoming immersed in his thoughts.

When they had arrived in the middle of that clearing, there was nothing around them for miles. Just grass and trees and mountains in the distance. They were in the middle of checking everyone for injuries when a tall giant, much like Hagrid's brother Grawp, walked around a tree and into the clearing. There were only slight differences, but as it dove for them they had realized just how different it really was…

Just as he had been able to pull himself to his feet, he heard Ginny's screams and he turned just in time to see her torn in half. He watched as the light dimmed in her eyes and as the monster swallowed her lower half whole. A green flash hit the monster in the chest and he couldn't tell who had cast the killing curse - Hermione, Harry or himself.

The sound of the monster falling must have alerted others around them because then they were running and praying. Just over the hill, the castle came into view and they raced for it. By the time they reached the gates and were safe inside, he couldn't remember how many of the monsters they had taken down.

"I want to know why that...thing ate Ginny!" Harry's shout brought Ron out of this thoughts as he looked up to his best friend with pain filled eyes.

"It was a titan." The soft spoken words had the three whipping around towards the door to find a young blonde man around their age standing just inside the room with Erwin and the man from before.

"A what?" Ron asked and he found the blonde staring at him.

"A titan," the man said again as he sat down in one of the free chairs. "They are cannibalistic creatures that terrorize our world."

Hermione sat up straighter in her seat as her face took on a white tint. "Those things are cannibals? That's why it...killed her?"

"Yes, I am very sorry. I didn't know that you had a fourth companion that you'd lost."

The apology felt sincere and Hermione nodded as he introduced himself.

"My name is Armin Arlert. I am here to talk to you about how you came to be here, what that means, and how we can work together to solve this situation."

"It is nice to meet you Armin, though I wish it were under better circumstances," Hermione said with a charade of a smile. "I am sure that you have already been informed of how we arrived here. Though it would be nice to speak about what that means and how we can fix this."

Ron gave Hermione an angry scowl. "Are you serious, Hermione? Fix this? Ginny's dead, we're in a medieval world, and there's no getting back! We can never fix this!"

Shocked at her boyfriend's outburst Hermione gaped, "I didn't mean it that way, Ron."

"Then how could you have meant it?! How are we ever going to be okay?! What about my family? I'll never see them again! They'll never know Ginny is gone!" Ron's shouts became louder and louder, causing Hermione to shrink into herself as tears began to fall from her eyes.

Harry stood from his seat and shot Ron a glare. "Ron! Settle down. Now is not the time to freak out and go AWOL on us again! You need to calm down and we need to stick together."

"Enough!" The cry broke through the fight and they all once more turned to Armin who was also standing out of his chair. "This isn't helping anyone. Now we are going to sit here, civilized, and make a decision about how to move forward."

Ron settled back into his chair as Harry sat back down in his seat. Once everyone was seated again and Hermione had wiped away her tears, Harry asked, "Is there any way that we can possibly stay here until we figure out a way to go back home?"

Armin glanced at Erwin, who looked thoughtful.

"Perhaps we can find a way for you to pull your weight." The commander gave the three a look of authority. "No one stays here that doesn't work to make life here easier."

The unnamed man leaned forward on the table as he crossed his legs. "You can take down a titan with a single green flash of light. That is where you would best serve."

Erwin raised an eyebrow. "The Wings of Freedom, Levi?"

The soldier, Levi they realized, nodded. "The Wings of Freedom."

oOo

Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition - Round Twelve.

Prompt: Blurring the Lines

Crossover: Anime - Harry Potter and Attack on Titan

Position: Beater 2 for the Montrose Magpies


End file.
